The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Electronic circuitry in handheld devices, such as mobile devices, tablet computers, etc., typically includes a central processing integrated circuit (IC) component that performs a majority of electronic processing for the device and, therefore, generates a greater amount of heat. In some embodiments, a heat spreader or “slug,” sometimes referred to as a heat sink, may be positioned in thermal contact with the central processing IC component. The heat spreader may be a flat metal plate, generally about the planar size of the central processing IC component, to distribute across the extent of the heat spreader heat from one or more localized hotspots on the central processing IC component. In embodiments, the heat spreader may be slightly larger than the planar size of the central processing IC component. The heat spreader may normalize the temperature across the surface of the central processing IC component and so may allow it to operate in a higher-performance, higher-power mode for a longer period of time before performance throttling is necessary to reduce the temperature of the central processing IC component.